Game of Thrones

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I sometimes like to quote Game of Thrones headlines and guess what the article’s about before I’ve read it. There was a little jealousy on my part that I wasn’t writing about the show weekly, because I think I could have done a good job, and I also hadn’t sold a pitch in nearly a year. It’s difficult to know what editors will like, and when you have trouble selling pitches, self-doubt creeps in.

This essay is really important to me because I’ve been thinking about the male-heavy production team since season four or five. I didn’t start watching Game of Thrones until after the third season had aired. I’d seen the pilot previously, but the amount of nudity put me off. When I did a blogging experiment to watch the first season (on my old blog, I’m not even sure if that still exists), I discovered that I loved it. I watched the first three seasons by Christmas of 2013 while I was listening to the audiobook for A Game of Thrones, and finished reading ASOIAF (just the published ones) by the time season four started. Over this time, I became invested in Sansa’s story, as an entitled teenage girl became a survivor.

Season four was when I was able to get into the discussion around Game of Thrones, which happened to have that scene with Jaime and Cersei in the crypt. I started to pay more attention to diversity in production, and how it can affect what happens onscreen. Then season five happened, and the possibility of Sansa going to Winterfell instead of Jeyne Poole was exciting until it went to the place everyone expected. This is a show I love dearly, and I don’t think loving a show means you can’t criticise it.

I spent a week working on this piece while I was also working full time and volunteering at the Melbourne Writers Festival (which has been great, hopefully I’ll write about it during the week). I didn’t really think about anything other than Game of Thrones for that week and I just worked on one piece. The people who cover the show weekly, whether through writing and/or podcasts put a lot of effort into what they do, and now I’m not sure whether this is something I’d want to cover on a weekly basis. It puts things in perspective. I’m glad to have written something about the show, and also a little glad it’s over for another season.

July has been a very welcome quiet month in streaming. This week there are a few things to look forward to, particularly the fifth onscreen adaptation of The Worst Witch, starring Bella Ramsey of Game of Thrones fame. As I wrote yesterday, there are (free!) screenings of Below the Surface, Ozark and The White Princess at ACMI this weekend, and a number of upcoming shows that we can look forward to. It’s a short one today, thanks for reading!

I made a choice a few years ago to not be political online. There are plenty of reasons for that which I won’t go into, but every once in a while I highlight shows and films on the streaming guide I think are important. This week I chose Chasing Coral which premiered at Sundance, and is about the attempt to visually capture coral bleaching, and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. I haven’t seen Bigelow’s films because I’m not very into war as a genre, but she’s also the only female director to have won the Oscar for Best Directing. That surprises me, but also it doesn’t. Aditi Mittal is one of the first women to perform stand-up comedy in India, another thing I didn’t know.

As for my other choices, Broad City and Game of Thrones are two of my favourite shows. Broad City deserves a highlight for that fantastic DMV episode (I renewed my licence last week, which you can now do at the post office. It’s the Australian equivalent of making an appointment), and there’s no season like GoT season. My podcasts are coming back, and I’m figuring out how to deal with this strange book/show world we live in. I’m happy that A Storm of Spoilers has a separate section for production spoilers, and stopping the podcast early is going to be an exercise in self-control. At the time I’m writing, George hasn’t followed up on this possibly fortuitous Live Journal entry, so that’s something to watch. I’m also going to be keeping an eye on any possible #BlackThorn evidence. Let me know if you find anything.

I’ve seen various writers post things they’re proud of this year, so I decided to do the same. This year I started to pitch pieces to other websites, which was scary, but I’m glad I did it. My experience working with editors has been positive, and I’m looking forward to doing more of it next year. This list of pieces is things I’ve written for the blog and other websites, roughly in chronological order.

The 2016 Emmy nominations were announced at 1:30am local time yesterday, and I decided that I’d sleep through it. I’m perfectly happy with that decision. I don’t really have much to say about the Emmy nominations that haven’t already been said, but as usual there are some things that are great, and some not so great. You can find the full list of nominations here (okay, it’s not the full list, it excludes the Creative Arts categories, which I’ll peruse later).

One of my favourite Game of Thrones podcasts is A Storm of Spoilers. It was originally for book readers and people who didn’t mind being spoiled, but now that most of the show’s storylines have surpassed the books, it includes production spoilers, which some people don’t like. One of my favourite parts of the podcast is the wild speculation and crackpot theories which are bandied about, and this week I came up with one of my own. I like to call it #BlackThorn.

Rachel Goldberg is now the showrunner of Everlasting, and before they’ve even started filming, her colleagues and the audience can tell she’s out of her depth. In season 13, Rachel was the Comeback Kid, and with Quinn she produced a fantastic season of television. Now that Chet’s (briefly) out of the picture, Quinn and Rachel are both promoted, which led to my favourite line in the episode:

“I’m Chet, you’re Quinn. I say crazy shit, you make it happen”

The line that’s more telling however, is Rachel’s insistence that she’s making history. In the first season we saw Rachel struggle with the fact that she’s morally compromised, but at the end of the season she had no trouble ruining Adam’s life after he dumped her. Nine months later, all of Rachel’s scruples appear to be gone, and it’s scaring people.